flip of a coin is all it had taken to seal seventeen-year-old Constance Levine’s fate.
‘Heads, she goes to Aunt Rachael in Manhattan,’ her mother had declared, barely able to even look at her ‘wanton’ daughter, the word she had used on first discovering Connie’s condition.
Manhattan. In America. That might not be so bad … Connie remembered thinking as she had dared to lift her downcast eyes to look at her father’s hands, one stacked on top of the other, primed to reveal her destiny, the scent of his sandalwood cologne permeating the air between them. But then it had all gone wrong. The coin hadn’t displayed the King’s head. And that was that. So there would be no sailing to New York and visiting exciting American landmarks, like the Statue of Liberty, which Connie had seen pictures of in her Britannia and Eve magazines. Or maybe a show on Broadway where she could watch professional dancers move with the grace and elegance that she always aspired to in her weekly dance classes. But none of it was meant to be. Not now the course of her destiny had changed for ever.
Instead, she had been dispatched on the next train from her home in Blackheath, London, to the countryside where nobody would know her. To stay with her grandfather’s sister, Aunt Maud, in the sleepy little village of Tindledale, surrounded by undulating fields full of lumbering cows and oast houses flanked with rows of hop vines reaching almost up to the sky. Aunt Maud was a dour woman who Connie had never met until the day she arrived here. But that was the point. Banished before her parent’s influential and, more importantly, highly respectable friends found out what she had done and shame was brought upon the whole family.
‘No, the matter must be dealt with swiftly and discreetly,’ is what her father had instructed when she’d tried to venture an alternative solution. That she marry her sweetheart and they live happily ever after. But Jimmy wasn’t Jewish and so her parents had forbidden any such union, plus he swept floors at the packing factory in Deptford, and that would never do.
Connie had met Jimmy at the funfair one Saturday evening on the heath when she’d gone with her best friend, Kitty. Jimmy and his best friend, Stanley, had been seated on the painted carousel horses behind them. It had been a gloriously balmy evening as they rode round and round and up and down with the sound of melodic organ music floating in the breeze, making Connie feel carefree and happy. Later, after winning a coconut and a fluffy pink teddy bear for her on the rifle range, Jimmy had walked Connie home, making her laugh with his range of silly accents and slapstick humour. His sweep of hair, as black as treacle, bobbing into his impish green eyes, had her swooning when he’d winked and tilted his head after saying goodnight at the gate like a proper gentleman.
They had arranged to meet by the duck pond the following afternoon and, just before she had to leave to be home in time for tea, he had swept her up in his arms and kissed her with such passion that she knew he was going to be the one for her. Love had blossomed for them in the weeks that followed; meeting in secret, of course, as her parents had taken an instant dislike to Jimmy. They hadn’t even given him a chance to show his worth when he called at the house one time with a beautiful bunch of wild flowers that he’d picked himself from the hilly field section in Greenwich Park. He’d even bought a jolly yellow satin ribbon from the haberdashery shop near the station to tie around the bouquet, but Mother had refused to even let him into the house before sending him away with a flea in his ear. And then later, right after Mr Chamberlain’s wireless broadcast declaring war on 3 September, Jimmy had signed up to do his duty for King and country, and it was as if the light had gone out in her life.
Connie had promised to wait for him to return, and had prayed every morning and evening that her darling Jimmy would stay safe and come back home from wherever it was they had sent him. She couldn’t bear to even consider the possibility of a different outcome for her truelove, and believed in doing so was only to tempt fate. Although Jimmy hadn’t replied to any of her letters since he went away, or even sent one of those miniature, colourful postcards like her best friend, Kitty, had received from her own sweetheart, Stanley. Kitty kept it tucked inside a compartment in her handbag so as to feel close to him, and Connie so wished she had a postcard too. A few words from him to hold on to. To keep Jimmy close to her always. All she had was the pink teddy bear. If she had heard from Jimmy, then perhaps she would have found the courage to tell him about their unborn child before now, instead of waiting until he came back to her. Or maybe it was better this way. She would be eighteen soon and knew that Jimmy would marry her right away when he heard about the baby … and they wouldn’t need her parents’ permission after all.
Pressing the palm of her right hand into the small of her back, Connie carefully lowered herself into the high-backed chair next to her bed in the spartan bedroom. Aunt Maud was a frugal woman who saw no virtue in home comforts or niceties, preferring to live a martyred existence that Connie was also expected to endure for the duration of her incumbency. Her punishment, it seemed, for falling in love and then allowing Jimmy to be intimate with her that one time. If only she had known their moment of passion would make a baby, then she would have held out until their wedding night.
So now the joy of being with Jimmy, the music and gaiety, cushions and comfort and glorious indoor bathroom that Connie had grown up with at home in London’s exclusive Blackheath, were all mere memories. There was no softness or joy in Aunt Maud’s world. With an outside privy at the end of the long garden, which even in the summer months was grim and cold, making the chilblains on Connie’s toes itch and throb with pain. The inside of the cottage was no better either, with its hard stone floor and damp walls, and so it was as if all the colour had drained from Connie’s life. When she had first arrived in Tindledale, Aunt Maud had let Connie take a walk out into the village where she had met a couple of farm girls sitting on a bench in the village square sharing a bag of chips. Sisters Winnie and Edie were around the same age as Connie, and so she had enjoyed chitchatting with them and pretending, if only for a short while, that everything in her life was still the same. Happy and gay. But Aunt Maud had stopped the trips to the village as soon as Connie’s fecund belly had started to round, and so she hadn’t had the pleasure of Winnie and Edie’s company since. Aunt Maud had even instructed Connie to remove her jaunty but ‘sordid’ magazine cuttings from the bedroom wall, so they were now confined to an envelope inside her diary that she kept hidden in the groove behind the headboard of the bed.
At least it will all be over soon.
I’m going to be a respectable married lady.
Mr and Mrs J. Blake.
And a mother, to boot!
Connie held on to these thoughts as she felt around the headboard. Then, after slipping the diary from its hiding place, she propped it up on the mound of her swollen belly and took the fountain pen from its holder. She checked the date before drawing a line through another day. Only a few more weeks to go. She couldn’t be sure though. Her mother had said it would take nine months, or thereabouts, for the baby to be grown enough and ready to be born, but Connie didn’t know when to count from. Was it afterwards when she had lain in Jimmy’s arms feeling all dreamy and on top of the world, with her body still tingling from his touch? Or the first time her monthly didn’t appear? And she hadn’t dared to ask.
But Jimmy would be home soon, bringing with him an end to her feelings of fear and shame. She had to believe this. It was all she could do, because Connie had never felt so alone as she did right now …
London, England, present day
Grace Quinn loved her job at Cohen’s Convenient Storage Company. In fact, it was the only thing that gave her real pleasure these days. Alongside her knitting and a large mug of hot chocolate with a dash of cherry brandy dropped in of an evening as she escaped into one of her favourite old films. She loved the classics. The feeling of being swept away into a world of nostalgia and glamour, where nothing bad ever happened, or so it seemed.